Cons:

The shredding has begun anew with the release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock this past weekend. Rather than just present one editor's view of the game, we've assembled three of our virtual virtuosos to offer their opinions on the latest in the series: Sluggo, our resident expert always looking for a challenge; Fargo, a longtime casual player who's looking to take his skills to the next level, and Sterling, who's always been proficient on Medium but has never owned one of the little plastic guitars until now. Here's how they saw things for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

Rocking Out

Sluggo: Inevitably, discussion of any Guitar Hero game comes around to the song list, and I think GH3's song lineup is pretty impressive. As before, there are eight tiers which get harder as you go along, filled with some of the most recognizable rock tunes of the past 40 years. You'll never please everyone, but in most cases, you've got the important iconic songs -- Heart's "Barracuda," Kiss' "Rock & Roll All Nite," Ozzy's "Paranoid." Instead of "Life Wasted" or "Billion Dollar Babies," we get the always-recognizable "Even Flow" and "School's Out." Even when the game goes for more obscure choices -- like the Who's "The Seeker" -- it turns out to be a lot of fun to play. So I think the GH3 setlist works on several levels.

This time around, GH3 boasts more master tracks than ever before (about half of the main set list), although some of the cover versions still vary in quality ("La Grange" is almost painful to listen to). On the plus side, there are interesting contributions from guitarists Slash and Tom Morello for boss battles (more on that shortly), Vernon Reid recorded new solos for "Cult of Personality" and the Sex Pistols reunited for a new recording of "Anarchy in the UK." Everyone's tastes will likely vary as to how excited they get by these recordings, but I find it pretty cool that the franchise -- which, it's easy to forget, only launched two years ago with zero hype -- now has this kind of pull to it.

Sterling: I think the set list is phenomenal. It's hard to argue with the likes of "Bulls on Parade," "Welcome to the Jungle" or "Helicopter." I'm more of an electronica kind of guy, but I love the great mix of classic rock, '90s alternative and metal on display here.

Fargo: I absolutely love the setlist. Sluggo doesn't really get excited by the opening tiers (which are too easy for him), but for me, rocking out to recognizable riffs list "Slow Ride," "My Name is Jonas" or "Black Magic Woman" is what Guitar Hero is all about. I don't mind if the covers aren't perfect; for a more casual music fan like myself, the fact that I had heard and sung along with over 75% of the track list makes this a real win for me.

Stepping Up

Sluggo: The other side of the coin is the relative difficulty of the songs. There's no doubt the note charts are tougher in GH3, at least on Expert -- some songs have massive stretches of 3-note chords, which were only introduced in GH2 a year ago. Raining Blood is by far the hardest song in the main setlist to 5-star, with an insane run of 4-note descending scales. And I'd love to put together a montage of "WTF!?" reactions when people inevitably fail at the meedly-meedly-meedly solo six minutes into Metallica's "One."

But the good news is that timing windows have been made more forgiving, so you don't have to be quite as accurate as before, and this goes a long way towards balancing things out. "Cult of Personality" in particular has some crazy solos that run up and down the fretboard and yet remain possible to pull off, and songs like "My Name Is Jonas" and "Knights of Cydonia" have massive stretches of hammer-ons that can be played with one hand if you're looking to show off. It's a trend I'm in favor of: if one of the game's goals is to make you feel like you're a hotshot guitarist, this is a good start.

Finally, from my own please-give-me-more-challenge viewpoint, the game's final two tiers are the most satisfying of any game in the series to date. Slipknot and Disturbed, two bands I've never listened to, kick off tier 7 with songs that are tough but fun to replay. Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" (a master track, thank god) will have players chasing down scores of 600,000 (and is a good candidate for the Xbox 360 game's 500k Achievement). Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover" may justify the cost of the game on its own. And then there's the bonus material, filled with insanity like Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and Flames" and other songs that are way harder to 5-star than anything else in the main setlist. From a challenge standpoint, it's a big thumbs-up from me.